SIGNED 'ABDULLAH BIN SHAYKH MURSHID AL-KATIB, SAFAVID HERAT OR TABRIZ, FIRST QUARTER 16TH CENTURY

This luxurious small Diwan by the Timurid poet Amir Shahi Sabzavari was copied, illuminated and illustrated during the early Safavid period and represents a rare and fascinating document of the development of the school of Herat with the new Safavid school of painting associated with Tabriz. In the painting on folio 34r, features of both schools can be seen - the young men are painted in the new Tabriz style, while the elderly are rendered in a more Herati style. Elsewhere, it is the new princes who are rendered in the Tabriz style, while the painter has lovingly rendered their associates and surroundings in the familiar old style of Herat.

The calligrapher, 'Abdullah bin Shaykh Murshid al-Katib al-Shirazi, copied a Kulliyat of Sa'di in the Topkapi Palace Library, Istanbul, in AH 960⁄1532-3 AD (acc.no. H. 739), and he is probably the calligrapher mentioned by Dost Muhammad in his preface to the Bahram Mirza album as Mawlana Nuruddin 'Abdullah of Shiraz (Dost Muhammad, 'Preface to the Bahram Mirza Album', in A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art, W. M. Thackston (transl.), Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989, p. 348). A curious inclusion into this manuscript is the 17th-century Mughal painting, which now opens the manuscript and which has been amended and enhanced at least three times since its inclusion within the Divan.

In addition to the Topkapi Kulliyat, an illuminated and illustrated manuscript of the same text copied by 'Abdullah bin Shaykh Murshid al-Katib is in the Walters Art Museum (acc.no. W.618), and a Diwan of Hafez by his hand was sold in these Rooms, 13 April 2010, lot 192.